Sunday, July 27, 2014

The recent Supreme Court decision regarding Hobby Lobby has sparked
relief and anger, depending upon which side of the issue people stand. Basically
our highest court respected the religious conscience of certain sized small
businesses to refuse obtaining health insurance which included contraceptive and
abortifacient prescriptions for their employees. Whether the same kind of
decision will be applied to larger organizations, such as EWTN, is yet to
be seen. Hopefully it will go favorably and permit freedom of conscience in all
cases.

Why is this a problem? The opponents claim that the decision was one against
women. On the contrary it is for women. First of all, no one is forced to
work for a company that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its health
insurance. Secondly, there are a host of negative effects of artificial
contraception. Moreover, has anyone considered how much the availability of
contraceptive devises has engendered disrespect for women, that is, seeing them
merely as sex objects?

The artificial prevention of birth and abortion make billions of dollars for
those in this business as well as for their stock holders. Anything that
threatens to reduce their profits is not tolerated. We need a reality check
here. We need to have true concern for each other as persons and not as profit
makers.

Each person has a right to follow his or her religion as long as it does not
hold principles harmful to others, This is freedom of religion which involves
freedom of conscience. We need to respect others and their faiths.

Over the next few weeks I will offer what I wrote concerning this issue a few
years ago. Hopefully, we will see why the Church has consistently remained the
only church to proscribe the use of artificial means of contraception.